


Improbability

by hedda62



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Invisible Scorpions, Special Guest Appearance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The flat is perched on the edge of the abyss, but he rather enjoys the view."  John, post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improbability

_Don't. Be. Dead._

*

His life divides into before and after, with a great abyss in the middle he cannot cross. There are days he spends at the bottom of the abyss, living on scorpions and the condensation that pools in stone hollows overnight. He isn't sure at first why the shadowed depths he can't climb out of are a desert, and then he finds it makes sense.

Other days he manages to sit facing the future; it's all very bleak, but for scattered seconds he thinks he might be able to crawl across it. For reasons unknown to him, the future is not a desert; it's a stream valley full of glacial rock broken into pebbles, and he knows it will hurt his knees and hands.

The days he spends in the past, wallpapered with memories, are the worst. The past manifests as an interior scene, surprisingly, since he seems to have spent so much of it running.

One day he wakes up from a dream of the past to find Mrs. Hudson, her face strained with compassion, serving him tea. He's back in the flat. He's _really_ back in the flat; it's not a dream, not some depressive fantasy; he must have let himself in with the key he carries like a talisman in his pocket, as if he were a small daunted creature on a quest it doesn't understand. "I've brought the fruit scones you like, with the raisins, dear," she says, and then plants a kiss on the top of his head and scurries off.

The flat is perched on the edge of the abyss, but he rather enjoys the view.

Lestrade comes by on one of his bad days, sits opposite him, and talks. It's not that he doesn't hear the words, just that his brain takes a long time to process them, as if they were coming in over a telegraph line, needing to be decoded. When Lestrade, frustrated by his inattention but also clearly aching on his behalf, gets up to leave, he puts a hand on John's shoulder, and John seizes his wrist and says, "Tell me," and words are no longer running on lines carried by poles through the desert.

Once he has words again things are a good deal better. Some of them still provoke spasms of sorrow -- "fall," "roof," "smash" -- but even those rebuild the structure of his life so there is more in it than the flat and the grave.

He decides that scorpions and scones do not a healthy diet make, and goes shopping.

He's still sensitive to swoopy coats and he cannot answer his mobile. But those are small whirlwinds of dark in a marginally less foggy existence, and fog is better than desert. The damp gets to the roots, and flowers grow. He regards them dispassionately, wondering what should matter: the brain receptors that process the scent, the Fibonacci numbers that arrange the petals, the symbolism or the sensibility. None of it would have mattered to...

He looks up. Molly has brought the flowers. She breathes at him, terrified; whispers, "He's not..." and then flees.

The flowers' scent recalls a memory from long ago: a hotel room in Brighton, his parents off for an anniversary dinner, and Harry bouncing on a bed. Leaping and springing, and then the fall, and the blood pouring out of her nose. He'd run whimpering into the hall, seeking help.

When he looks up again he's outside Barts, watching a dark bird swoop down out of the sky into ruin.

*

He hires a stage-magic consultant to provide a scenario. Not that he'll believe it, but he can file it under a rock in the abyss, guarded by scorpions, and look at it now and then. The man's nearly as weird as Sherlock; he lives in a windmill, for God's sake, and when he's done measuring everything at Barts and intimidating the staff and constructing models, he fixes John with his sad puppy-dog eyes and then looks away and speaks in tongues. John can't think of anything but how much he wants to run his hands through the dark curly hair and kiss the pale brow, and he's so shocked that he pushes the man out the door before he's even finished talking. Shock is good; shock provides entertainment and distraction, and the scorpions chorus "Boring!" in his head and start dancing what he's sure is a mazurka though he has no idea how he knows. His head is a jumble sale of facts and memories, most of them useless.

The report says that Sherlock could have faked his death, given planning time and the cooperation of multiple people. There are days when John wants to cling to the improbability of this, but he can't start by eliminating the impossible, because it is so very possible. He saw it. Not that he can trust his eyes, when he's having visions of dancing scorpions. The windmill man was very clear about the unreliability of eyes.

But Moriarty has gone to ground somewhere, and John has twitched his spider's web enough already; he goes quiet, and he doesn't go back to Barts, and he buries the improbability in a bank vault and goes home and has tea.

*

After their mazurka the scorpions find it easier to work together; they sting him in chorus and he looks up to find Mycroft sitting in Sherlock's chair. He wonders if Mycroft has scorpions of his own. He hopes so.

"Why are you here?" he asks. He suspects and doesn't care that Mycroft is irritated by this, as if he'd already explained when John wasn't listening.

"I was concerned. Mrs. Hudson tells me you are uncommunicative and haven't been eating properly." John finds this unfair; he has the remains of a lamb korma in the fridge and he thinks he fried something this morning. "Do you... require assistance?"

"Psychological or financial, do you mean?"

"Either."

"I have a therapist." He hasn't been to see her lately, for fear he'll tell her about the scorpions. "And it turns out that medical doctors with a good command of the English language are in demand. Transcriptions, abstracts, that sort of thing." He's had an offer; not done anything about it yet. "So you can go away now," he adds.

Mycroft nods and puts his hands on his knees as if about to rise. Then he pauses, and after a moment says, "My brother cared about you. I hope you know how extraordinary that was. He wouldn't want--"

"How the fuck do you know what he wants?" John says, and then realizes he's used the present tense. Mycroft is presently tensing, too, though it only lasts a second, as does the present until it's past. It doesn't feel like an abyss any longer, more like a broad bare plain full of boulders and cactus, with a near-invisible river shimmering in the distance.

"He would have wanted you to be happy," Mycroft says, and takes his leave.

John curls into himself on the sofa; the scorpions cuddle up next to him like cats. He should get a cat: a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Someone who'd make loud noises and claw him if he failed to do its bidding: a familiar, wrenching exasperation. Plus cat hair all over his... he looks down at himself and notices he's wrapped in one of Sherlock's coats.

 _Well, that must have looked neurotic,_ he thinks, though he's not sure of Mycroft's ability to distinguish one person's coat from another. He should start giving things away; the flat is a tip, full of Sherlock's rubbish. Time to have a good sort-out. After lunch. It's two in the afternoon; definitely time to eat something. And then perhaps he'll go for a walk. A lovely day; best make something of it.

*

On a bench in Regent's Park two hours later, he lets his shoulders fall back and draws in a deep breath of crisp air, feeling the welcome ache in muscles unaccustomed to exercise. Maybe tomorrow he'll try running.

*

The day that Sherlock comes home, he bursts into the flat, startles the cat into fleeing up a bookshelf, and falls to his knees at John's feet. John lays a hand on Sherlock's head, like a king blessing a wayward and wandering knight on his return from dragon-hunting, and then Sherlock hisses, "Get down, you idiot!" and stretches out prone on the floor.

John follows him, as it should be, and the bullet shatters the window glass a second later. "Air rifles," Sherlock says, as calmly as if they were having tea; no, more calmly, and then, "We'll be safe in approximately sixty-seven seconds. It's not necessary to lie on top of me like that; when they shoot out the other window the trajectory of the broken glass won't reach this far, and in any case it would cut you just as badly as it would me."

"Maybe I'm making sure you don't get away again."

"You're not being sensible, John." The other window explodes, and a stray fragment of glass caresses John's cheek; the blood dripping down onto Sherlock's face is perversely satisfying.

The last scorpion possesses the fingers of John's right hand with the power of three years' anguish and fury; he pinches Sherlock hard under the ribs. Sherlock twitches, struggles, rolls over and pins John beneath him. The horizon whirls; the plain is ablaze with flowers; the river is close enough to touch, and they are laughing, laughing, and the world is improbably beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that was a Jonathan Creek cameo, unacknowledged because I don't have the chutzpah for a real crossover, even though it was the very first thing I thought of after "The Reichenbach Fall." Feel free to steal the idea if you're inclined.
> 
> Continued in [The Cat Did Nothing in the Night-Time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/496467).


End file.
